Adventure Gamers - Forums

SoccerDude28 - 06 November 2015 06:26 AM

As far as the cupboard puzzle Why was the text mirrored? Is that how the people of Keplar write in mirrored english? Shouldn’t they either write in English or Anterran?
I found it quite confusing.

Some people use a padlock to protect their goods: Forté (who came on Kepler before us) used this mecanism that he probably found convenient. Keplerians cannot read Terran language, except for Nicci, and the mirrored-letters added another level of protection just in case. It goes well with the content of the diary in my opinion. Was it really too much?
Personally I don’t think that this puzzle is really too much difficult, it requires observation and thinking, and maybe to just take a break in the game. ASA is not the kind of game where you should rush things, and I remember in Riven spending a very lot of time (days/weeks) on specific puzzles before finding the solution.

What is difficult, as a developer, is to judge of the challenge of a puzzle. Sometimes you think it will be very (too?) easy, and it’s all the contrary. Hard to be objective when you know the solution before creating the puzzle
I always tried to create well-balanced puzzles but I know it could have been better.

I think I like this cupboard puzzle however, it’s both simple and challenging.

Iznogood - 05 November 2015 09:16 AM

Storywise, I don’t know if this has been discussed before as I haven’t read all the post here, but I’m guessing that we are caught in some kind of time-loop, and that the guy we are chasing and who has left all the diary entries and notes, are actually a future version of ourself. That was actually my very first thought after the intro where some guy in a spacesuit took the box, and everything that has happened after that fits perfectly with this theory.

I think it would have been mentioned or at least hinted at already if we were Forte ourselves. It’s not something you’d overlook, imo.

What I think, though, is that the guy that took the cube from us IS Forte, still on the Ark after all these years. Maybe the Ark works in a way that the person on it is meant to take it on a grand tour of the universe to collect knowledge, and then gets to choose his successor (us) for the next cycle.

Simon_ASA - 06 November 2015 06:51 AM

ASA is not the kind of game where you should rush things, and I remember in Riven spending a very lot of time (days/weeks) on specific puzzles before finding the solution.

I’ve just reached Forte’s house, and according to Steam, I’ve played for 15 hours.

Noddy - 06 November 2015 09:02 AM

TimovieMan - 06 November 2015 08:17 AM

What I think, though, is that the guy that took the cube from us IS Forte, still on the Ark after all these years.

That’s what I was thinking, but not that’s he’s on any grander mission/tour - just obsessed (possessed?) by the cube(s) and his own personal need to understand them.

One of the things that make me thing we are Forte, is that the same thing that happened in the beginning also happened to Forte, that someone in a space suit appeared out of nowhere and took the cube from him. So there is at least some kind of cycle going on here, and I bet that at some point we will have to steal a cube from our successor.

One thing that however makes me doubt a bit, is what Simon wrote in the beginning, about 2 generations of people from the Forte family - in the book of course, not necessarily here in the game.

Iznogood - 06 November 2015 09:32 AM

One of the things that make me thing we are Forte, is that the same thing that happened in the beginning also happened to Forte, that someone in a space suit appeared out of nowhere and took the cube from him. So there is at least some kind of cycle going on here, and I bet that at some point we will have to steal a cube from our successor.

And that’s why I think it’s a cycle of succession instead. Same info, different conclusion.

What if there was no answer in the game?

Simon_ASA - 06 November 2015 11:21 AM

What if there was no answer in the game?

Then we’ll get some nice discussions once the game is over.

I’ve read the next two memory sticks, and now I’m ready to revise my thoughts so far to what Noddy said:

Noddy - 06 November 2015 09:02 AM

That’s what I was thinking, but not that’s he’s on any grander mission/tour - just obsessed (possessed?) by the cube(s) and his own personal need to understand them.

The cube is obviously messing with Forte’s mind, and if he’s disregarding the warning by the Anterran, then it’s very possible he’s slowly losing his mind to the cube, becoming obsessed or even possessed by it. He says he’s better because of the relationships on Kepler, but never underestimate the power of denial.

TimovieMan - 06 November 2015 11:33 AM

I’ve read the next two memory sticks, and now I’m ready to revise my thoughts so far to what Noddy said:

Noddy - 06 November 2015 09:02 AM

That’s what I was thinking, but not that’s he’s on any grander mission/tour - just obsessed (possessed?) by the cube(s) and his own personal need to understand them.

The cube is obviously messing with Forte’s mind, and if he’s disregarding the warning by the Anterran, then it’s very possible he’s slowly losing his mind to the cube, becoming obsessed or even possessed by it. He says he’s better because of the relationships on Kepler, but never underestimate the power of denial.

He is obviously obsessed and not quite sane, he is beginning to act more and more like Golum in LoTR. But that doesn’t invalidate my own hypothesis, so I’m sticking with it until proven wrong

Anyway I just managed to catch up with everybody else, and press the big red button!

I quite liked the Kepler and Forte planets part, though I am a bit disappointed that we never got to meet any of the inhabitants.

By far the two most difficult puzzles in this part (Kepler + Forte) for me, was the locker puzzle and the quiz! It took me quite some time before I realised the idea for the locker, and I kept running around looking for some clues. As for the quiz, well without checking diary or anything else I actually got 12/20 correct and by checking the diary and my extensive collection of screenshots from the game: 18. But I must confess that I checked the walkthrough for the last 2 answers
I also checked a walkthrough for the music puzzle, but I consider that totally fair as I HATE music puzzles!

As for the bug puzzle, I’m not sure if it is a bug or not (pun intended!), but two of the bugs have a different colour than in the bug collection. I still managed to get it right on the first try though.

Favourite puzzle: The green/red lights on Kepler.

And I’ve pressed the red button.

The note next to it more or less confirmed that the guy that took our cube in the beginning is Forte himself, and he’s going Gollum over the Monolith. Minor mistake, though: according to the note, we’ll never find the two codes and the key, except that we need the two codes to even read the note.

Took me a while to find the key because I had missed the location next to the bed at first.

Needed 3 tries to solve the quiz. Got 15 on my first try, thanks to my rigorous note-taking, and then searched for the answers to the other questions. Believe me, I’m glad that the questions stayed the same on a retry. Not like that evil quiz in Toonstruck.
I got 19 on my second try (because I kept saying Earth instead of Terra). :crazy

My very favourite puzzle in the game so far is the oven puzzle on Kepler. Top notch stuff!

Sefir - 02 November 2015 08:24 AM

In this chapter there are also IMHO some of the best MAID comments.

The completely deadpan “That was mind-blowing.” after that ride was good for a chuckle, as was the “Don’t fall now.” on the ladder.

It is difficult to know exactly for the Original Edition (and I don’t remember!). If you add bundles, I think it’s around 2000 copies, but as you know bundles sell games for a very low price (often less than 1 euro/game). The regular sales must have reached a total of 400 or 500, I would say.

Well, I do hope that this CPT helps your sales. This game deserves much higher sales than that.

Mikekelly - 06 November 2015 03:49 PM

This game deserves much higher sales than that.

Definitely!

As an aside: the menu and title screen is very slick and professional. I’ve let the song loop each time I started the game so far.

Still playing.

Mikekelly - 06 November 2015 03:49 PM

Well, I do hope that this CPT helps your sales. This game deserves much higher sales than that.

Thanks a lot. I don’t know if the CPT will help the sales. Everyone around has his own copy now, and the others will probably not read all these pages?
Honestly it doesn’t matter because ASA was initially created for the fun, as a personal challenge, and not for money. It is true that I would like to be able to sell the game more and live from it, but I prefer to focus on the most important: we’re all having fun with the game here and I’m glad we could do this CPT together!

——

I think you have all made enough progress to visit planet Forte (rtrooney, where are you now? Can we help?), so I can probably tell you more about these islands and the similarities with Riven. The first thing you all noticed is that these islands are made of rocks and are surrounded by a beautiful turquoise sea, which is the most obvious reference to Riven. However, when creating the Forte islands, I just wanted to make paradise islands like described in the diary, and that was my only purpose (so no obvious tribute to Riven here). I found my main references for the islands while looking for rock textures on CGtextures, and you can find good examples that inspired me here:
https://www.textures.com/download/rockformationsbig0055/82137

I don’t know where these photos were taken, maybe in Asia or Carribean lol
Anyway I loved the view and it was definetely the kind of paradise island that I wanted to do. Then I started working on planet Forte in 3D and created my own islands: the ones you see in the game. It is true that during the production process I often thought of Riven and did a kind of mix between the above photos and my memories of Myst II. However I didn’t look at reference pictures and screenshots from Riven at any moment, and in fact I just never looked at anything about Riven while working on ASA. All the direct or indirect references were created from my memories of the game, and all the things that I loved in it.

So I more or less designed planet Forte from photos, without trying to make it look like Riven. However, there is indeed a direct reference to the game: the cable with the pulley that allow you to go down from the first island to the main one. This was a direct reference to the cable car in Riven, which has impressed a very lot of people because it was an exciting moment.

I travelled a lot in Riven from an island to another just for the fun, because the videos were awesome and the cable car and other transport devices were great. I wanted to do something similar in ASA, and I wanted the player to have some fun in this peaceful world where nothing really exciting happens. The wagon in the Kepler mines was just the same: a way to wake you up in case you were starting to get bored.

On another point, while working on the Remastered Edition, I did a lot of work to improve the rock on the islands. In the original edition, it was flat and the texture was somewhat blurry. The view where I find the difference is the most obvious is near the telescopes:

I think it’s clear that the Remastered view is more detailed (even if there is a loss of quality in this GIF comparison).
However in the remastered I also lost a few details from the original game when re-rendering in HD. Indeed, one of the plugins I used for the forests was missing and as a result, if you compare the main view of the islands, you can notice that the forest on the left island has disapeared in the Remastered! I had no other choice unfortunately since it was a software issue, and I think it was not very important, but that was interesting to have a wood on the side of that island and I’m a bit sorry that it was cut in the meantime.

However you can notice the difference in the details of the rock. It is obvious on the left of the picture, where there are sharp and sculpted details that did not appear originally. It doesn’t make a huge difference, but if I had used the original texture and model of the rock, the place would have lost a part of its charm.

I would like to end this explanation with a comparison of Kepler before/after, where you can see the improvements I did in the Remastered. There was the matter of color (too much red) that I already explained earlier, but you can also discover another important detail: the texture of the Ark has been improved. While it was made of large and unrealistic plates before, the metal is now much more descreet and integrates better in the environment…